My marriage was never a great example of what a relationship should be, and yet, it left an imprint on me.

Almost a decade after its demise, I still find myself surprised at some behaviours that, at the time, I considered to be normal, and am only now finding out how toxic they actually were.

I’m at the point where I can embrace the experience for what it was — a steep and important learning curve, but it’s amazing how being in a new, and most importantly, healthy relationship can highlight just how wrong things were in my past.

My former marriage meant coming home and touching up my makeup, fixing my hair, and being presentable for him when he came home.

It meant dressing a certain way, and there were arguments when those standards slipped.

These days, The Boy comes home to me in my baggiest sweat pants, sloppy pony tail and a freshly scrubbed face, dancing in the kitchen while ’90s hip hop (which he hates) blasts from the speakers.

Without fail, he will tell me how beautiful I look, then he will disappear into the bedroom and emerge, wearing only a T-shirt, ginch, and his favourite bunny slippers.

These interactions are polar opposite from one another and a girl has to ask herself — is this true love, or are we both just letting ourselves go?

Perhaps we are letting ourselves go.

I certainly don’t feel the pressure I put on myself in the early days of our relationship to look my best at all costs, which was perhaps carried forward from my marriage.

In any event, when you’re constantly told how beautiful you are by a man so secure with himself that he wears animal slippers in public, looking a certain way becomes less important.

And while I have a closet full of clothes that actually have shape and style to them, they’re for work, or for going out on dates, not for dancing in the kitchen while I prepare us dinner.

Is our lack of effort into our appearances a sign that we truly connect on levels much deeper than the superficiality of looks, or are we headed down the slippery slope of complacently?

We live in an age where boredom is rampant, and temptation is accessible through the hand-held devices we are all enslaved to.

So many couples complain about the lack of effort within their long-term relationships, and a search engine can overwhelm you with the amount of information on how to keep a relationship sexy, and instructions on how to keep things fresh.

Are baggy sweats and animal slippers the start of our decline, or merely, the foundation for a relationship that will only get better as more time passes?

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